Getting our Kicks on Route 66

more like a kick in the pants really. Though we do live 1/2 a block from Route 66.

The move was the pits. Stressful does not even begin to describe how the last few days have been.

Last Friday we were supposed to pick up our U-haul and a car dolly from a B-town dealer. Thurs afternoon they called me and told me that there MAY be a problem with getting a truck but they would call me back. At 8:00 pm they had not so I started ringing every phone number I could find on the U-haul website and could not get a hold of anyone who gave a damn and was basically told to wait until 7:00am to call the regional office. I did and was told my truck was in a town 30 miles away and would not be ready to pick up until noon ( I expected it reasonablly early in the am) I called around and the only comparable truck I could find to rent was literally triple the price without a car dolly. So we decided to just buck it up and go pick up the truck that we had reserved then U-Haul called and told us that the truck had mechanical issues and would not be available until SUNDAY. No, no, no this would not do at all. Hubby had taken Friday off of work, his cousin had driven up with him from St. Louis to watch the kids, we had people lined up on both ends of the move to help. U-haul actually had the gall to ask if we couldn't wait to move until the next week! Anyhow we decided to cough up the cash and go rent the triple the price truck since that was our only option. Well this put us about 4 hours behind on the loading plan at least and added considerably to our beer consumption which started as soon as the big yellow truck pulled into the front yard. To add to the nightmare we discovered our original plan to load the stuff hubby and I could handle wouldn't work as the heavy stuff needed to go into the front of the truck. Thankfully hubby's old boss and our associate pastor came over and helped load that evening and everyone worked until it was too dark to see into the truck anymore. The next am we started bright and early and had help from others packing and loading again but our hoped for plan of pulling the truck out of B-town around noon failed and it was closer to 5 pm with a 6 hour drive ahead of us, two DIRTY little boys and three adults exhausted. We ended up driving to a town just north of our destination and staying in a hotel for the night. Luckily Hubby's cousin was game for getting home a day later than planned.

The next am we drove to our new home (more on that issue later) unloaded the stuff in the van and I drove Hubby's cousin to her apartment - she's not a confident driver so we left a vehicle in B-town for the week - met The Flying Eagle who took Igor and Sonny Boy to the zoo for the day and then brought them home to us in the evening. In the meantime Flying Eagle's husband and several guys from Hubby's new job came over and unloaded the truck before I even got back. Who would have guessed that unloading would go at such a pace?

When I got back from dropping off the kids I start to work on unpacking but soon discover that the kitchen is disgustingly dirty. The interior of the cabinets filthy, the fridge so gross I still haven't completly cleaned it. I'm thinking monkeys may have lived here before, so I sent Hubby across the street (literally) to the dollar store to buy cleaning supplies, ours are all back in B-town as we have to go back and clean there this weekend. After a couple of hours of cleaning we finally begin putting the dishes into the cabinets. As of this writing - late Wed - I've still got tons of boxes to deal with and an odor in the bathroom I'm pretty sure is cat urine that has been covered with linoleum. Lovely. I guess it will no longer matter that the boys pee all over the floor. Anyways the house has some plumbing issues and the basement smells distincly like sewer gas (a lot like many buildings in Ukraine), only 3 of the 4 burners on the stove work, the oven is so dirty I'm scared to turn it on, it has a self cleaning feature but who knows if it works and it's too hot right now to run it. The A/C unit in the window doesn't work, thank goodness we brought ours, the yard needs mowing already and the list goes on and on and on. I'm really glad this is a temporary abode but it's going to be a long year.

To top the agravation we decided we are going to forgo cable here and just see what we can get on the TV. Well we thought our TV was digital and the reason it wouldn't pick anything up was a lack of antenna - nope our TV is apparently analog and we didn't take advantage of the coupon thing when it was available. I don't know if it still is but even so I want to watch the news now not in two weeks when the coupon comes in.

I registered Sonny Boy in school today, that's a whole 'nother post because I'm still trying to organize my rant about that. I'll just say that the school district here did not give me warm fuzzies as a first impression.

Well I guess that should be getting some bitching out of my system for tonight. Stay tuned for yet another saga of MOVE TO ROUTE 66.